Friday, November 27, 2009
off to turkey
daniel
will be leaving for turkey
tonight.
7:20 PM...i walked away
6
Thursday, November 26, 2009
making paper
the role of the chemist is to make paper.
the role of the poet is to write poems on the paper.
the role of the physicist is to use the reverse side of the paper to solve Einstein's field equations
the role of the blogger is to blog about paper without actually being within 1m of a piece of paper.
On wednesday, daniel went for the DCHE papermaking competition which he signed up for a month ago in order to earn more brownie points. Despite his team being able to make the best piece of paper according to the official competition rubrics, the team still epic-failed.
Because of poor lab safety/cleanliness.
First, because the RI team was the only team to make paper out of 99% plant matter and 1% methylene blue solution, their table was, not surprisingly, the messiest.
-1 point for cleanliness
Second, because plant matter has the tendency to stick to the surface of irons, daniel used the sharp edge of the knife to scrape off the plant bits from the iron WHILE THE IRON WAS STILL TURNED ON.
-1 point for safety
Third, because the RI team brought along their own oven, iron and hairdryer, the organizers penalized them for having alot of wires criss-crossing along a wet table.
-1 point for safety
~~
In the end, the top 2 prizes went to the 2 CHIJ teams even though their paper looked ugly. The only consolation is that it could have been worse.
1. The RI team brought some hamster straw and some starch in order to strengthen the paper. However, because there was alot of hamster straw and starch remaining after paper-making, while the other group members were waiting for the paper to dry, daniel amused himself by putting hamster straw on teammate's hair while simulating a Saharan sandstorm using the starch powder.
possibly -2 points for cleanliness
2. Daniel accidentally knocked down the CHIJ team's bottle of red food coloring. Luckily they had finished using it anyway.
possiby -1 points for cleanliness, -1 points for safety (daniel did NOT sweep off the broken glass pieces afterwards)
3. The RI team was the only team to accidentally burn a portion of their paper (luckily they were still able to submit the unburnt portion for judging) simply because daniel decided to put the heater to 300 degrees centigrade (not degrees Kelvin!) in a physics experiment to test the heat resistance of the paper. Luckily he wa able to spot the smoke in time to avoid the entire piece of paper erupting into flames.
possibly up to -10 points for process depending on whether the RI team is able to convince the judges that burning the paper was intentionally done.
4. Sometime before that, daniel amused himself by simulating marshmallows through throwing starch powder into the heating coil of the oven.
possibly -1 points for safety
5. After the rest of the team got pissed with daniel for manhandling the heater (see point 3), the team assigned another member to control the heater while daniel amused himself by burning a piece of cardboard using the neighboring heater. Surprisingly the cardboard didnt burn, but simply gave out alot of smoke and triggered the human smoke alarm, who declared a state of emergency and spent nearly 15 minutes hunting down the source of the smoke. Luckily daniel was able to hide the piece of burnt cardboard in time, in one of the drawers. Not being able to identify the real source of the smoke, the organizers spontaneously decided that the RI oven was the source of smoke (maybe they saw the burnt marks on the heating coil, see point 4), and banned the use of the oven by the RI team.
possibly -20 points for safety if the organizers had found the real source of smoke. Not being able to use the oven probably also resulted a slight loss of points.
~~
either that, or the other theory is that because a large porportion of the juding panel consisted of the poly students who oversaw the entire competition, the usual anti-RI discrimination may have played a part in deciding the final outcome.
~~
Yes, as Welras commented, daniel is on high recently.
9:33 PM...i walked away
6
Saturday, November 21, 2009
haikus look better in vertical lines
古池 蛙飛び込む 水の音
松尾芭蕉
into the old pond
A frog jumps -
the sound of water
Matsu Basho
off for AFA!
7:58 PM...i walked away
facebook
daniel has decided to delete all the meaningless "friends" that he has accumulated through facebook. So, if you search in your friends list and find someone called "Daniel Tay" accompanied with a pic of Albert Einstein by a blackboard, then that means that you have impacted him in some way or another, and will always be remembered xD
the primary reason for doing this is rather simple: daniel got fed up of having to plough through pages and pages of crap before getting to the really interesting status updates of the people that he really cares about.
a secondary reason is that daniel gets really angry everytime some stranger with a muslim-sounding name posts a status update about his children. The first rule of biology states that people should breed like people, not rabbits.
a tertiary reason is that siak peng the infamous level 112 mafia wars mogul has decided to retire from a life of crime in order to take up a teaching position in a top school in Bishan. Hopefully the three students under his charge for SSEF would not cost him his job by performing unauthorized experiments in anal or not following the proper safety procedures in their activities.
eeks. primary, secondary and tertiary remind daniel of proteins, which in turn remind daniel that he is not taking biology next year. Not having to memorize biology frees up alot of much-needed brain juice for other subjects xD.
in other news, daniel is STILL having trouble deciding between CLL and L. he put L on the matriculation form, but the L website sucks.
O learn to read what silent love hath writ,
To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.’
Shakespeare Sonnet 23
Interested in books? Reading them? Writing them? Talking about them? Studying them? Are you fascinated by what makes a best seller? A classic? A turkey?
Well, if so, you’ve struck it lucky; you’ve come to the right place!
The JC Lit Team comprises all sorts of people - youngish, oldish, long, short, tall, flat, round, grey, blonde, black, bald, bold and shy – but we are all one in a shared passionate obsession: books! And we are all hoping to live up to Roger Rosenblatt’s claim in The Odd Pursuit of Teaching Books that “Two, perhaps three, teachers in a lifetime stick in the mind, and one of them is almost always a teacher of Literature”.
We share the same desire to communicate our passion to people like you; to inspire a love of Literature through both a rigorous formal study of texts and, where possible, participation. During your time with us you will have the opportunity to live Literature through theatre trips, film screenings, performance, the RI(JC) Literature Week and perhaps best of all - by joining the Literature Trip to the UK. Somehow reading the end of Hardy’s Tess of The D’Urbervilles in a Singapore classroom doesn’t quite compare to experiencing the same passage recited while dwarfed by the monolithic Stonehenge.
Back home in Singapore we spend our time at junior college looking lovingly at words and how they work; studying closely the techniques of those whose words seem to come to them so easily, those who are beset - as we are - by what T.S. Eliot called “the intolerable wrestle with words”. From them, we seek to improve our own writing, raise the quality of our own written response both to literature and life. We believe Alexander Pope when he says:
‘True ease in writing comes from art not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.’
Why bother some would say. But, you see, we believe all this writing things down matters. Why? Well, Phyllis Rose summed it up for us in her book Parallel Lives:
‘ I believe we need literature which, by allowing us to experience more fully, so imagine more fully, enables us to live more freely.’
For us, Literature is the subject, more than any other that makes us aware of what it is to be really and truly human. So, if you want to live life more freely, experience life more fully, come and learn to read and “dance”, with us.
WTF. seriously. WTF. are they trying to put off potential L students, or are they trying to subtly influence L students to take CLL instead of L? the CLL site is so much more awesome.
the CLL site is so much better, especially since they even included some of the teacher's works, some chinese jokes, and even a group shot of the CLL department which students such as Martin Lim might consider cute. (CLL is considered a humanes subject, right)
decisions, decisions. since daniel already likes chess, can play the piano and has proven time and again his proficiency in drawing random whiteboard comics in class, taking CLL might be a good way to fulfil the 书 requirement in 琴棋书画. Plus classical chinese is an awesome way to suan people. (Sorry Bryan Cheong, but suanning in Greek/Latin/French/German/Esperanto is terribly outdated). Being able to PROPERLY read and understand the confucian classics would also probably also provide free L4s (or the equivalent) in GP application questions.
in any case, taking H3 physics and double sci RA (hopefully); L (in english or chinese) and CAP (hopefully) seems to be a rather ownage subject combo especially when combined with daniel's L33T soccer tackling skills.
12:06 AM...i walked away
6
Sunday, November 15, 2009
after EOYs
daniel hasnt posted for a long time, largely because he keeps getting inspiration to post, yet somehow becomes too lazy to post just when the blogger screen loads up.
1. grad night (not nite) was rather fun, just that the food was extremely fail ($60 per person for a not-so-posh buffet), the ballroom was extremely fail (the mike didnt work! but then again, NOT being able to hear ashraf sing is probably a good thing), the audience participation activities were bleh (to borrow a martin expression) and mr law was strangely absent from any stage performance whatsoever. Still, we had fun taking pictures of each other in compromising positions, while the game of chess with aaron and friends was rather entertaining too.
still, grad night (not nite) doesnt make alot of sense since we will be meeting each other in the corridors while ponning lectures anyway.
They might as well have given us more time to study for the RA tests the day after.
2. daniel's GPA is screwed up this year because of chinese (going off topic TWICE in a row during midyears + eoy is a major disaster) and math 2 (daniel's personal theory is that he cannot withstand 4hrs of consecutive maths without bursting a neurone or something. sian). piffle. it is not going to look good on scholarship applications :( meanwhile martin lim is having fun showing off his 88% average (without chinese).
being elitist requires one to have an elitist GPA in the first place.
3. the evolution talk several weeks ago was rather funny. russell tried to ask his usual religion question, to which he got a perfectly politically correct answer, much to his disappointment. Personally, daniel cant understand why politically-correct old ladies who rear politically-correct chihuahuas in their condominium apartment go hysterical at the thought of mating their female chihuahuas with St Bernards, yet are able to tell you with a solemn face that "foreign immigration leads to cultural diversity". the problem, in both cases, is to even enter the intended object without causing grevious bodily harm. the second obvious problem is that generations and generations of thought and effort gone into producing such fine pedigree goes up in smoke. It is one thing to understand that human beings are equal to the extent that all of them share the same evolutionary common ancestor, but it takes abit more insight to understand that after millenia of localized cultural development, each culture is markedly different from each other and simply do not mix well.
4. subject combinations are going on rather nicely. PCML for the win!! daniel is somewhat considering CLL instead of L, simply because the CLL curriculum is much more structured and overall more interesting in his opinion. also, china has, by far, a richer literary history than the whole of europe combined. the obvious problem is that daniel's chinese is only slightly better than aaron's, but a major feature of the CLL curriculum is 文言文 anyway,so he wouldnt be at too much of a disadvantage compared to the chinese scholars.
5. has anyone ever seen the little mermaid (the disney film)? probably.
has anyone ever read the original classic (the hans anderson fairytale)? probably not.
the original is far better xD READ HERE all the nuances in the original were completely ignored in the disney adaptation!!
considering that the original was ALSO intended for the same target audience of children, the marked difference between the two versions just goes to show how the intelligence of children in general has dropped over the years.
Just to check the general intelligence level of children nearly 20 years after "the little mermaid" made its debut in cinemas, here is a poem on the same theme by Cyril Wong. Yes, the poem was technically written for the general audience, not for children per se, but then again, Singaporean kids are supposed to be above average in reading and comprehension skills (either that or it is the Singaporean tuition teachers are above average). Here goes:
sea witch's lament
In response to the Little Mermaid
I know what you must be thinking,
that we witches are a sorry lot -
old, spiteful, ugly as sin. Regardless,
every spell will have its price,
the rules not of our making.
Neptune knows I did everything
to stop her, even warned her of
that taste of hell in every widening step,
barbwire scrap of air against skin,
the center of her body clenching
like a fist, hoit red tears drooling from
that brand new mouth fixed open. But
she was ready with sacrifice, silver voice
she pressed like a bribe into my webbed,
unwilling hand; so sure she was
of marrying, of her womb filling
to its brim with baby pairs of feet.
The younger ones are like that, tails
bright green and glimmering, shifting
rainbows in very scale. Golden hair
fresh out of water and already they
gush about longing, the desire to be loved
like the scissoring of her body into two;
damage, we know, that is also permanent.
the other poem on the left of the poem is rather interesting as well. Cyril ftw!!
my name is magdalene
I was
Something men rubbed
Against themselves, then thrown away
Like a rag with too many holes.
I was a widening tear in the cloth, air
Diving in and out of me like strangers.
Funnily enough, I was also a key
That locked them further
Into their bodies, despite the hint of
Freedom turning at every knob.
Then, one afternoon, you held these
Hands to raise me, and they became real -
it was that simple. You said, "Mary,
Love me, and you love yourself."
6. the "psychoanalysis of the institution anthem" essay actually earned daniel a distinction for the freud DMP module. that means that the teachers actually LIKED the essay xD
7. daniel is currently addicted to the not-so-recent Channel 8 chinese drama series from 430 to 530 pm, 春去春又回。 basically, the concept behind it is very similiar to the little nonya: a period drama about overcoming the odds. The main difference is that it is far better than the little nonya (which sucked). The costumes are better, the set better, the plot more coherent, and the characters are far more likeable than the stonish Jeanette Aw. Best of all, unlike many other period dramas, it is also able to accurately portray the state of shanghai society in the pre-war era, which is an impressive feat. Must-watch. It should really have been promoted to the prime 7pm or 9pm timeslots instead of being regelated to the 430 slot, which as everyone knows is generally watched only by housewives in the lazy mid-afternoon before preparing dinner.
Really! mediacorp should stop producing either formulaic local dramas or subpar period dramas that serve only to allow viewers to pretend that they are actually "learning" some "culture" from TV. Just taking any random mediocre script and forcibly adapting it to a period setting in order to raise viewership is one thing, but actually making good creative use of setting to augment the underlying themes and messages is quite another thing altogether.
5:37 AM...i walked away
6
Thursday, November 5, 2009
GPAs & EOYs
dont ask.
4:32 AM...i walked away
6
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Mished Potitoe
this morning, russell brought a potato to class.
we wrote on the potato in class
then we gave it to Eddie, who was not in class
but was in the staffroom marking math EOY papers from our class.
oh, and waichoong actually turned up in class
for the first time since he ponned class
due to being hospitalized in KKH, a hospital with class.
even so, in order to cheer him up, our class
gave him a get-well card that was crude, not class.
On the class potato, I wrote three phrases:
1. Timothy 来过
2. 易霆性感
3. Mished Potitoe
does anyone know a what a mished potitoe is? it is what you get when you mash potato but leave the eyes in. russ lim likes mished potitoes. aaron seems vaguely amused by it. Eddie chua was completely oblivious to it. the three stages of love, perhaps?
the main difference between a class and a classroom is that from freud's psychoanalysis, classrooms connote empty enclosed space, which suggests empty wombs, which in turn alludes to the various miscarriages every year that occur when large blobs of flesh, blood and bones wrapped up in sanitized white sheets make the transition to RIJC.
like mashed potatoes. yes, that was the simile i was looking for. potatoes mashed with their eyes wide open. mished potitoes.
according to wikipedia, 15% of all pregnancies end in miscarriages.
What is the current miscarriage rate of our (supposed) alma mater?
to quote worm's blog, "HDB neighbourhoods are like the countryside of Singapore, peaceful, laid back and more homely. Just watched Sweet Home Alabama last night, so I decided to be a Reese Witherspoon and walk around the neighbourhood reminiscing…"
I do not agree. the singaporean countryside is but a decaying lump of mished potitoe, a lone tuber forcibly cut from its parent plant*, then trampled upon; a forgotten land on which moss and fungi grow like hdb apartments.
we are the garden city, the mished potitoe city. In such a city one does not reminisce. We sanitize ourselves to avoid the insanity around us.
Even the world looks like a potato from outer space. Is it being mished as well?
Let a potato be a potato. Let it grow nicely. Let it have flowers. many people have seen a potato, but not its flower. potatoes have flowers too, you know. Flowers are nice; they do not decay, but merely wither away in quiet elegance. If you were to mash a flower, you would be able to extract its sweet scent. Wish upon a flower, and let your wishes be carried by pollen to the fertile ground, where it will bear good fruit.
I hear russ lim wants to bring a celery to class next xD.Labels: 4H, raffles institution
6:22 AM...i walked away
6
